"Consolation Prize," "In Celebration of Mistakes," and "No Gravity"

Consolation Prize

Temecula sounds blond
with wine 
never to touch
the stratosphere,
 
adjusts abundance 
with availability
as pulse wields 
inner outer power 
 
loud with hemp 
and grief and
tender flowers
politics, the tentative 
 
arrangement of thin
talent proximate 
to inner power 
gentler by fever
 
fields from small
palaver quarter tones 
intact a whole world's 
mood away from forest, 
 
as the rush of water
comes and seethes
white shush upon
the quiet rage of need.

 


 

In Celebration of Mistakes

This continent that is my life includes bumps, ridges, and smooth places seen from mountaintops and little hills. A line of code precedes the rain. Lime green light affords a way of seeing branches and stems. I hold still, I reach, and learn to sing. I live the lake, the stream, prepare to find a road that breaks the sun. My feet are warm, the clothes once on the line I hold to me.

Sentences, a sentence within language not yet meant

 


 

No Gravity

When he laughs, he hears the womanly inclusion of a crying sound, afraid of letting go. There is no gravity to safen him. The monster boys he wanted to touch or be are poised to show themselves. He has no guarantee of something he can count on, he agrees to laugh, reveals that he is willing to give in to what they want. He concedes points never made, the rollerblade of envy that occupies some land he might have owned. If only he could dwell unharmed and look across into their eyes equal as thought. 

 

 

Sheila E. Murphy

Sheila E. Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Her most recent book is Golden Milk (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2020). Reporting Live from You Know Where won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition (Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland), 2018). Also in 2018, Broken Sleep Books brought out the book As If To Tempt the Diatonic Marvel from the Ivory. The chapbook Separation Theory (Writers Forum, 2004) was just reprinted (Trainwreck Press, 2022).

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Thursday, September 30, 2021 - 22:04